the mockingjay sings
by whitelilly0989
Summary: "The cruelest thing is that time carries in itself more echoes of songs she performed when caged than now that her burned wings have room to break free." Five Times Katniss Everdeen sang, and the one time she didn't.


**Author Notes:**

So, I have finally finished this series of one-shots, and character studies of Gale, Peeta and Katniss. I have to admit this one was the most difficult to write because I had to find a balance (the balance I think Suzanne Collins did not give me) between hopeful and sad about losses, and to be honest this ended up in a more positive note than I had foreseen. Still, I think the ending is adequate for Katniss' state of mind. For my take on the other two dumbos in this series, you can follow the link of the series, or go to my profile and read those. This has just been my take on the OT3 that I deserved.

I hope you enjoy this and if you want to comment here, or in the other two parts, please feel free.

I'm going unbeta'd because it's late, and I just want this story into the world.

PS. I'm bluesravenboyss over at tumblr, in case any of you want to say hi.

 _"Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed_  
 _Had now persisted in the woods so long_  
 _That probably it never would be lost._  
 _Never again would birds' song be the same._  
 _And to do that to birds was why she came."_

Robert Frost, **Never again would bird's song be the same**

 **The Mockingjay Sings**

 **and the one time she didn't**

 **(prologue)**

After the war, Katniss never sings.

Not like she used to, at least. She hums, she mumbles syllables low in her throat, she purrs them even, but she never shouts the words, or relaxes her vocal chords enough to produce melodies that other people might enjoy. Even before the war she had already decided that music was lost the day the mines exploded, taking her favorite person in the world; so after her sister's death and the loss of her best friend, it was only natural that whatever trace of song remained turned into a cacophony without rhythm and names.

Mockingjays sing in sunny prairies and in duets. Who does she have left?

The cruelest thing is that time carries in itself more echoes of songs she performed when caged than now that her burned wings have room to break free.

 _ **I.**_

 ** _sunshine_**

Primrose Everdeen is born on the rainiest day young Katniss has witnessed.

It's a visceral rain; the kind with thick drops that make explosive sounds when gravity makes them reach their destination. The crackling sounds of water hitting the metal roof are soothing though, at least it makes it easier to focus on something other than her mother's pained screams in the next room.

Katniss doesn't know yet what being a big sister means. Her mother has explained it as _having someone to take care of_ and her father has said it's like _having someone to love,_ but Katniss thinks this little baby will never lack those things because it already has them in her own parents, so she doesn't know exactly what is left for her to _give._ She thinks about her shoes from last year, and the notebook where her dad scribbles things, but she's pretty sure a baby's needs are different than hers; and besides, she doesn't want to share her father's notebook with a baby just yet.

A few hours later though, none of that matters when she hears the violent high pitched screams coming from her mother's room, because the baby is here; now. There's a part of Katniss that is scared about this baby and wonders if it's possible for it to be sent back into her mother's belly, but there's another part of her that's four years old that is just curious about this very tiny, very loud person.

So she makes her way into the turmoil of her mother's room, where the midwives are still drenched in blood, water and sweat, in order to be a part of this, whatever _this_ is. The midwives make gestures towards her trying to get her out of the room, and they speak words at her that Katniss cannot hear - does not care to hear - amidst the whistle of the rain. Katniss only has ears for that devastated scared cry that is powerful enough to be heard even through the thunder and lightning outside; so she keeps going, going, going, like a human being following a siren's call, up to where her dad has the baby in his arms.

She wants to see her. Her hands are sweaty with excitement, and her ears ring hard inside her skull, but she wants to see the bundle of cloth that is restlessly moving in her father's arms, she wants to see the little mouth that's capable of being heard though the disastrous downpour of this cold afternoon.

Her father understands her, and gives her a look of silent agreement, as he kneels to Katniss' level, and when her eyes finally land on that baby, she doesn't notice the blondness of her hair, or the whiteness of her skin so different from hers and the arms of the man that hold her. She doesn't notice the blue irises, nor the pinkish cheeks, or rather she _does_ notice those features, but she doesn't really care about them. All she cares about is the force of this small creature; how it refuses to stop wailing or frantically moving her limbs, and there's something about that fight and energy that bewitches Katniss in place.

Her father whispers something in Katniss' ear so that she can hear it in spite of the rain, in spite of Prim's cries, in spite of her own blood coursing roughly through her veins, and Katniss does as she's told, still enthralled and possessed.

Katniss sings.

She sings about sunshine and dark gray skies and as the notes flow out of her one by one the baby starts to move less and less, equally bewildered by her sister's voice as Katniss had been by her shrill, and in the future Katniss will not be able to decide if the magic of the event resided in Prim's quietness and awe, or in the fact that the rain stopped when she gave Primrose her very first gift.

 ** _II._**

 ** _valley_**

Katniss does not remember singing the valley song. She doesn't even remember the words.

There are times after the war, when her legs are tangled up with Peeta's underneath the sheets, with sweat pooling at her navel and his quiet sleeping breaths making ripples by her side, where she looks at his gold eyelashes and she tries out melodies from her childhood thinking that maybe by reproducing notes at random, some vault in a corner of her brain might open the lock, and the song will come back to her. She racks her mind sometimes to the point of headaches in an effort to remember what it was like to be the girl in the red plaid dress, with two braids instead of one, and she always comes out empty, always jealous of Peeta's certainty, of Peeta's accuracy and photographic memory giving her pieces of herself that were already lost to her.

Katniss knows she sung The Valley Song because the rest of Panem knows, because Peeta knows, and what Peeta remembers becomes what happened. What Peeta has said to the masses has always been what happened with no right to appeal, or change; and even though she fights it, even though she's tried to make peace with the design that was handed to her, part of her, - the part of her that was daring and rebellious, caustic and dormant - thinks that is unfair.

What if The Valley Song was just a song? What if years later, even though it's _real_ , and even though it's _always_ , she's still playing by somebody else's rules.

 ** _III._**

 ** _Rue_**

They build Rue a memorial a year and a half after the war. They ask Katniss to attend to the ceremony, and the second she agrees and the phone line goes dead, she rushes to the bathroom and everything in her stomach comes back up.

She sits in the tile floor of this empty mansion and focuses on the coldness of the air, on the bitter taste of bile behind her throat, on the faucet drip that Peeta keeps promising to fix and never does. She focuses on anything and everything that takes her mind off of the first twelve year old girl that she couldn't save, she tries to sidestep girls named like flowers that were too young to be gone too soon.

She tries to convince herself that there are no more Games, that she helped make that happen; that there are no more children thrown into arenas, and no one else will face Rue's fate, but then she remembers her sisters blonde curls and she cannot help thinking that Arena's are not the only methods to cause pain in this world, and suddenly her entire frame rattles as she vomits the venom that gnaws at her bones.

She just wishes she were _somewhere else_ far removed from anything that would force her to remember. Miles away from anything that reminds her that she promised both those girls _meadows_ and _here is safe,_ and _daisies_ that vanquished all evil and harm, and none of them got what she promised. Most of all, she just wants to be miles away from a world that still thinks she has protector's wings, when they easily break her armor with words on a phone call that remind her of all the people she has lost, all the blood in her hands, all the weight of grief.

Peeta finds her hours later crouched on the bathroom floor, cold sweat matting her hair against her forehead and it's not until he presses his lips hard into hers - not kissing, just connecting - that she realizes her throat is sore from humming the words to Rue's song in a circle for God knows how long.

 _ **IV.**_

 ** _tree_**

She sang to Gale once. She doubts he remembers it.

It happens after the whipping, when Hazel has no more tears to cry and her face has gone lax enough to show no traces of the hardened brow she relied on to watch her son's pain. It happens when everyone has gone to sleep, and Gale's hands are still softly curled up in the shape Hazel's knuckles left them in.

Katniss sits by the table occupying Hazel's place, oddly calm in Gale's hands, and looks at him in ways she has never allowed herself to look at anyone. He looks younger, bushy eyebrows and rosy lips that beam with the same urgency the blood on his back poured out; perhaps even more so now, Katniss thinks. She's suddenly very conscious of the red in every single artery, the thickness of it in the bandages, and of how the same furious color courses through hers.

They _touched_ him. The Capitol did. They touched the only person that knows the real her in spite of promising not to if she played by their rules. She's burned before, been dressed in fake flames that inspired uprisings in District 8, but touching Gale's sweat, hearing his soft moans even with the morphling, and staring at numerous spots of dried up blood on the kitchen floor, the heat in her veins burns like a volcano.

She thinks about quarry, about how her options are dying in the woods running, running, escaping, or dying here beside the person who's always been a rebel, who has always been _hers_ and she holds his hand tighter, presses her lips into his and promises to cause trouble to his barely present feverish mind. If her only options are dying, she can die giving _him_ the chance he as always foreseen. When his breathing relaxes into something similar to peace, she waits at least ten minutes before she starts intoning words.

It's not a song anyone else has heard of, although her father used to tell her that the song was very old, before the climate change. Yet, she still remembers each and every word, the lull in her father's voice whenever he sang it to her mom on days where the sun wouldn't shine; how the bitter-sweetness of the tune spoke about longing and unfairness, and growing up just to be buried before it was due. Her father used to sing this song to her mother in the quietness of the nights where he thought it fit to suit her sadness rather than try to keep her smiling, and even though she's not sad, and feels more determined about her purpose to Panem more than she's ever been, Katniss sings the song and runs fingers through Gale's hair.

She sings about trees growing high, leaves that grow green; and it feels deep in her stomach like she's been saving the words of this song for Gale's story - for this revolution's story - and for hers, and by the time she reaches the lines in the song about a boy that is already dead at age eighteen, her voice shakes as she looks at his wounds, and is relieved the song wasn't right about that part yet.

Years later, sometimes she dreams about that night; about her singing voice on the same kitchen, with Gale's bloody sleeping body on top of a wooden table and she remembers Gale's eyelids fluttering with the dips and raises of the notes. Sometimes her dreams and her memories cohere in perfect unison and when she feels him breathe easier, her singing turns softer and she breathes easier too. She takes cues from his mangled body in order to mellow out or harden her voice, much like she always did back in the woods, and her dream always ends right at the second when she puts her forehead against his and gentles sighs escape him; sighs that no one else would have noticed unless they were _her._

She always wakes up shaking, remembering what it was like to call Gale _hers_ with perfect clarity, just like she did that night of the whipping, and just like she does often in her dreams.

Who is she trying to deceive? Of course, wherever he is, Gale must remember her singing to him, too.

 ** _V._**

 ** _hanged_**

She never sings the hanging tree again.

It's not like she had sung it a lot before the war broke out, but the song stayed in her head for ten years without her giving it more thought other than the memory of her father and nooses made of rope by her seven year old hands. But after she inadvertently gives the song of her father to the cameras, and the song is forever linked to the rebellion, she actively wishes it could be gone from her brain just like the valley song. The footage of her singing it with the birds is never broadcasted; and it becomes the first clip where her face doesn't make a hijacked Peeta rage, so it technically shouldn't hold a lot of bad memories or association with the war. Still, the song reminds her of times where it was important to find out if death was indeed the only way out of the dangerous games she was forced to play.

The song reminds her of pending answers, and she doesn't want to admit there's still moments where she thinks the _freedom_ the song promised was in fact hidden on midnight gatherings and necklaces of rope.

 **(The one time she didn't sing)**

 ** _Under the willow_**

It's twenty years after the war and she goes to her daughter's school for a musical production. Of course, her daughter will sing. This does not surprise anyone.

Katniss' hair is shorter than the rest of Panem would like, and her body still has gnarly scars up her arms, down her legs: emblems and remnants of battles that make Katniss more _her_. Peeta goes with her, there's paint underneath his nails, and a bit of flour in his collar that she cleans without anyone else noticing as they walk together into the school's assembly hall.

It's become refreshing, almost. Acts like that where she fixes something small in him that no one else knows is broken; things that she can pat herself on the back for and relish in the small victories. It has taken years to throw a foundation on their relationship that isn't covered on eggshells, or bomb shelters, or chaotic nightmares, but she likes to think they're getting there; that having children together has forced them to attempt to put their demons behind them and go back to that _protective_ mode that was their relationship at their core.

They find a place to sit, and he throws a sideways glance at her while he stops and lets her into the row first. The people around them speak in hushed voices when they recognize them, but they are used to this; they have started to become grateful for the fact that they don't stare at her scars or the graying in his hair anymore at the very least.

The first time she heard her daughter sing on her own, a drawer in Katniss' brain opened as if a long lost thing was found only she couldn't remember losing it, or where the thing's place was anymore. She struggled to settle her nerves and Peeta ran soothing hands down her shoulders while she explained to him that there had to be something fundamentally wrong with her as a mother if her daughter's voice unsettled her so much. It wasn't until the girl asked her with a childish voice to join her in the song and they harmonized together so effortlessly that she realized her daughter's voice sounded a few octaves higher than the grandfather she would never meet. Katniss had to continue the song with a lump in her throat, but after all she's not a stranger to pretending things are fine when there's hurricanes inside her soul.

And so when the little girl stands before the school, and starts singing the words to Rue's and Prim's lullaby, Katniss half-smiles but one of her palms closes up, marking her nails into her skin in an effort to stay in the here and now, and not travel back in time to horrid places she's still trying to surpass. Peeta's learned to sense her mood swings and he reaches for her hand and gently pries her nails away from the middle of her palm, but he never takes his eyes off the little girl as the spotlight shines on her for different reasons than when it shone on them decades before. It's beautiful and unsettling yet exciting and full of pride even if Katniss' goosebumps have a lot to do with Rue, and her father, and losses cut a long time in the past.

Half through the opening song everyone in the audience is mumbling the words to the lullaby too, everyone becoming mockingjay's repeating the melody back at Katniss' little girl, and when Peeta whispers into her ear something along the lines of _Will you join her?_ Signaling for her to sing with the crowd too, it dawns on her that it might be the first time someone is singing about meadows and prairies and safety and warmth, and the words of the song might actually be true.

Katniss smiles back at him and shakes her head _no_ as a careful tear slides down her cheek. The war's mockingjay doesn't sing anymore, she simply doesn't have to. 

**End Notes**

This concludes my takes on Peeta, Katniss and Gale as characters. Also, in case anyone else was wondering, the songs Katniss sings that are not in the series that I decided to make her sing here are "You are my sunshine" to Prim as a baby, and "The trees they grow so high" to Gale. The rest are songs found in canon.


End file.
